Up Dreamland's Spine
by ainokitsune
Summary: Flashfic  He wakes up. That's the first problem.  Spoilers for 6x22. Note: This is NOT fix-it fic! It's kind of the opposite, really.


_**Note:**__ I'm very interested in the fact that there's no real reason for Castiel not to go back in time and rearrange things to his own satisfaction. And I like the idea of Castiel having to clean up his __own__ mess._

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><p><strong>Up Dreamland's Spine<strong>

He wakes up.

That's the first problem.

He's surrounded by trees. The sky is black and full of stars.

The second problem becomes clear when he pats himself down and realizes _what_, exactly, it is that he's missing.

It's such a huge, all-encompassing problem that he completely loses track of time and, for quite a while, doesn't even notice problems three, four, and five.

By the time the sun's come up, Castiel has realized there are, in fact, about seven billion new problems, give or take a couple million.

He swears, but very quietly.

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><p>He stops numbering the problems when the whole thing begins to take on an air of futility.<p>

"I rode the bus," he murmurs to himself, ignoring the weird prickle in his eyes that accompanies _that_ particular memory, the noise and the hurt and the sickness and the—above all else—the sense of being needed_. _Of being _indispensable._

The Singer abode mocks him in its serene, domestic perfection. Lemon-yellow siding and flowered curtains pulled through windows by a gentle breeze are a screaming klaxon of _wrongness_ that fills him to bursting with unease, and bring his footsteps to a stuttering halt on the well-maintained front walk. Around him trees whisper and the emerald lawn gleams under a cloudless sky.

"Shit," he mutters, and stares helplessly at the painted porch with its swing and potted plants.

The door creaks open. The face is familiar, wrinkled and bearded but bright in the eyes, pleasant in demeanor. Castiel shifts back a step.

"Help you, young man?" Bobby calls, and Castiel shakes his head.

"No. I'm sorry. Wrong house."

Wrong everything.

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><p>The twentieth century never happened. He goes online in a library and looks for familiar names, calamities and horrors and atrocities and they're simply…gone. <em>Gone<em>, and he spends ten minutes in the restroom hunched over a toilet heaving up his guts. He shuts his eyes against the tears.

No Hiroshima. No ethnic cleansing in Rwanda, no war in Georgia. Archduke Ferdinand is a minor note buried in a sea of other minor notes. No one's heard of Pol Pot. The swastika is a religious symbol for life and good luck. 'The Great Leap Forward' returns no results. The Khmer Rouge, the Stalin regime, the American Dust Bowl, the HIV/AIDS pandemic…it's as if someone has simply taken a broom and swept them all away.

He wobbles back out into the main floor of the library and watches men and women and children go about their lives. He tries to imagine how they perceive their world, how much they understand about the human capacity for evil, and he can't. He looks down at his hands. He looks up at the ceiling and tries to imagine the sky.

"What have I done?" he whispers, and the sky returns no reply. "_Castiel_. What have you _done_?"

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><p>He finds no record of the Winchesters. He looks. He looks for weeks. He panhandles because he needs to eat, and sleeps in doorways because he has no choice. Sometimes he locates a shelter and has the chance to shower, shave, take care of himself as best he can, based on a handful of hazy memories filed under the heading <em>How To Be Human <em>from a brief and terrifying period in his existence.

It might be better, now, to say, 'his life.'

He tries a summoning ritual and isn't surprised when it fails. He visits several churches, five temples, and two mosques. There's little news to be had. He prays and prays, lies prostate for hours, kneels until his joints lock, and nothing answers.

He has no wings and he cannot fly. He suspects there may be no God left to search for.

He searches for the Winchesters, instead.

* * *

><p>He's sitting by a pond watching the ducks bob serenely when the noise of a flock of birds thunders in the distance. All the hair on the back of his neck (<em>his<em> neck) stands up, and goosebumps erupt over every inch of his skin. The ducks surge into startled flight and leave ripples in the water.

"Hello, Castiel."

The voice is wrong. Horrible, and wrong.

And it's _his._

"I wasn't sure there was anyone left," he says, staring down at his hands, at his wobbly reflection in the half-empty cup of coffee.

"There's me."

He sounds so much like Lucifer it makes his throat lock up. Castiel had never, _ever_ imagined his voice could sound like that. All that power, contained by the thinnest membrane. Who knows what it would take to make it snap?

"I've been looking for—" he begins, and suddenly _he's_ there, ramrod straight, still in the suit and trench coat but wearing it wrong, wearing it all wrong. Their knees are nearly touching.

"I'd rather you didn't say their names," the other one chides, and Cas (because maybe that's the best name now, because _Castiel_ is something huge and terrifying and awful) seals his lips shut and blinks and looks away.

"I'm sorry," he whispers, because now he understands. He shuts his eyes and squeezes one hand into a fist on top of his knee, and manages not to flinch and spill coffee all over himself when a different hand rests warm and heavy on his shoulder.

"I know," Castiel says gently. "I know you are."

When Castiel leaves him he covers his face with his free hand, and the tears are hot, and taste like salt.

-end-

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><p><em>Notes: Title from Tom Waits' <em>_Everything You Can Think__, which is my private theme for Godstiel. _

_Incidentally, I do think Sam and Dean are around somewhere...even if Castiel unmade the prophecy and the war and everything else, I tend to think that their souls might be bobbing around somewhere. Maybe Death has them stuffed in a jar, or something. Like fireflies..._


End file.
